HP CEO Says Google-Motorola Deal Could Close-Source Android 203
swandives writes "WebOS could be an important player in the long run as an open-source mobile OS, because Android could become closed source with Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility, Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman said during a speech at the HP Global Partner conference in Las Vegas. It may take up to four years for the complete impact of webOS to be felt, Whitman said. HP has said it would release WebOS — originally developed by Palm for phones and tablets — to the open-source community. The company bought Palm in 2010 but late last year announced it will not make devices that use the software."
Re:Of course (Score:4, Interesting)
hahaha. This now calls into question "why?"
as in, why would HP suddenly start making microsoft-esque misstatements and spew FUD about android? Does this mean they have given up? something else? The timing of post-acquisition is curious, unless HP has been making money off patent settlements on android.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Interesting)
Well. Glad to know your position isn't coming from one of total ignorance. /Sarc
By the way, publishing to the WebOS App catalog has always been FREE. Just submit it to HP for inclusion and as long as it isn't total crap or spyware/virus filled, they will put it in. Failing that, WebOS still has a robust user community and you can easily have an app published through the community catalog as well.
As far as FREE tablet goes, have you gotten one from Apple or Google (or any android maker) yet? No? Then you are just blowing smoke out your ass and being petulant when it isn't needed.
The thing is that developing for WebOS is so stupidly simple it's almost laughable. Just take your EXISTING Anrdoid or iOS application, run it through HP's FREE app converter to convert it, do a little bug-testing and squashing and you're pretty much ready to go.
Hell, if the small (at the time) Rovio team could convert all of Angry Birds to WebOS from iOS in EIGHT HOURS, I think you can manage it too. Unless you are saying that you aren't smart enough or just too lazy, which, given your generally snotty attitude, might just be the case.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with that fantastic android tablet hardware is that it appears to be on a 90 production schedule. I've been writing an app designed for both iOS and Android tablets. We had one client that was more intersted in the android tablets because they could get usb ports and use existing usb cabled barcode scanners.
Well of the three android tablets we bought last fall, only one is still available. We even talked with a couple manufactures in china and they couldn't garuntee the tablets we orders three months from now would be the same as the ones we ordered today. That means if we were to go to market today with android as our lead platform we would have to sink a lot of money into inventory and hope we sold the devices because there is no garuntee that in six months we can find the same tablets. It's also a pain because we don't want to be in the hardware business. We want to sell the app and related support services for the software.
The appeal of the iPad has been, if one breaks our customer can go to walmart or other big box store today and get another one right then and there. Also, in the past several of our customers had a bad experience with another solution that used propitarty hardware. They view the ipad as off the shelf defacto standard stuff.